


Rise a Night

by phyripo



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Gen, Presumed Dead, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: Six years after his brother’s death, Tuomi returns home, hoping to find some closure. What he and his sister find instead, defies all their expectations.
Relationships: Estonia & Finland & Hungary (Hetalia)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Rise a Night

**Author's Note:**

> Have I not written enough things named after songs yet? No! I have not! I never will!
> 
> Anyway, here's Tragic Werewolf Story ft the Finno-Ugric trio, in which I borrow elements from various werewolf myths to make my own, mostly inspired by Sonata Arctica's Among The Shooting Stars, but honestly, they have a lot of songs about (were)wolves and I'm not convinced the singer isn't a furry (love you Tony). They're still my favorite band. This fic is named after the (non-wolfy) song of the same name! It’s set in the fifties for Some Reason. I thought it'd be interesting, I guess.
> 
> FEATURING  
> Finland - Tuomi  
> Hungary - Erzsébet  
> Estonia - Eduard  
> Ukraine - Iryna

Eduard has been gone for six years, and Tuomi finally returns home.

He doesn’t think he’s ready, doesn’t think he could ever be, but he thinks it’s time.

As when he left, winter’s veil has cloaked the town. Coming home in another season would have been easier, when maybe every footstep in the snow, every light behind closed curtains, wouldn’t remind him of the night his only brother died. Tuomi has never been one to take the easy route, however. Winter is always going to come eventually, often sooner than expected here in the north; there’s no reason he should sit around and wait for it.

Besides, his half-sister still lives here. He hasn’t seen her since he left the town, and it will be good to be able to hold her again. They wrote, whenever Tuomi lingered in one place long enough, and he called sometimes when he had money to spare for it, but none of that is really a substitute. Two years ago, when Erzsébet got married in the summer, he’d been planning to come, but found that he still couldn’t. He’s only seen her husband in pictures.

Now, Tuomi crunches through the snow and the darkness of the late afternoon to his childhood home, where Erzsébet still lives. The blue walls are still familiar, still painful. It’s inconceivable to him that his sister has managed to stay here after everything, but he supposes he and Erzsébet just have different ways of coping.

When she opens the door, she looks good. A little older, certainly, and not nearly as radiant as in the wedding pictures she’s sent him—even in front of the two empty seats in the front row of the church—but healthy, and happy to see him. Without saying a word, Erzsébet pulls him across the threshold and into her arms, kicking the front door shut behind him while he drops his bag. Her grip is so tight it crushes the air out of Tuomi, but he hugs her back just as tightly, breathing in the scent of cigarette smoke and bread clinging to her blouse.

“It’s so good to see you,” she whispers into his damp coat.

Tuomi closes his eyes. Swallows.

“It’s good to see you too. Sorry it took me so long.”

Life just goes on, even when the last remnants of childhood are ripped away—the remnants no one even knew were left. That’s something Tuomi knows now, if he knows anything.

“Are you hungry?” Erzsébet is asking, already tugging him further into the house. She’s always been the pragmatist.

“Of course I’m hungry,” he replies. “Erzsi, wait, my coat is wet.”

She waits impatiently while he takes the coat off, taking it from him and hanging it up to dry on the door to the living room. The hall is just as narrow as he remembers, but it’s less cluttered now.

In the living room, a fire is crackling in the hearth, and nothing has really changed. Before, Tuomi and Eduard lived here together, while Erzsébet had stayed with their mother in her tiny new home until the day she died. At least, she didn’t have to know her eldest son didn’t make it past the following winter.

The room has a few new pieces of furniture—maybe made by Erzsébet’s husband, who, according to her descriptions of him, enjoys carpentry in his spare time. Speaking of him…

“Is the husband not home?” he asks, turning to his sister and realizing he has been silent for too long. Erzsébet smiles softly, shaking her head.

“He’s out in the forest. I’ll tell you about it later.” Now, she gestures him towards the dining table, and tells him to sit while she gets dinner. The table is new, but the chairs are the same. Tuomi forces himself not to imagine Eduard coming into the room, carrying some book or another and ready to discuss something he heard on the radio today. He’d have loved to see how more and more people are getting a television. Erzsébet doesn’t seem to have one yet, but Eduard’s beloved radio still has a prominent place in the room.

“Do you need a hand?” he calls out, but Erzsébet is already sidling back into the room, carrying a tray with a large pan on it. It smells good, and wafts warm air into Tuomi’s face when she sets it down on the table.

“I’ve got it.”

“I see.” He smiles at her when she sits down as well, handing him a plate and cutlery from the tray.

There is stew in the pot, which is great, mostly because it warms Tuomi’s chilly fingertips and nose. Erzsébet talks about pretty much nothing while they eat—the town gossip, as if he’s only been gone for six _days_. He appreciates it. It’s not that he doesn’t have things to tell her, but he doesn’t think he can yet. There will be plenty of time to make her laugh with the strange situations he’s found himself in these past years.

“What _is_ your husband doing in the woods?” he does ask, during a lull in her monologue.

“He’s a hunter.”

He knew that, somewhere, but, “It’s not hunting season.”

She sighs. “There’s been some—there have been attacks. Some kind of animal, a wolf or maybe a bear. The winter has been quite harsh so far, so it’s probably getting closer to find food, and that includes our livestock.”

“So they’re going to kill it?”

“If it comes to that.” She shrugs, swiping her hair over her shoulder, although a strand of it catches on her orange blouse. It’s much longer than it was when Tuomi left. “They can’t find anything, so far. Maybe it moved on. There’s a lot of forest.”

Tuomi hopes so.

They sit around talking for a while, until he starts yawning, and Erzsébet insists he should go to bed, she can deal with the dishes herself.

“I wanted to meet your husband,” Tuomi complains, even as he hauls his bag up the stairs to his old bedroom. It’s a guest room now, although some of his old things are still there. He wonders what they’ve done with Eduard’s room. Doesn’t know what would be best.

“We’ll still be married tomorrow, Tuomi. Get some sleep, you’ve had a long day.”

That’s true; there was a train ride, and the ride with a passing stranger, and then the hike up to the town, through the snow and falling darkness.

“Fine, fine, since you insist.” He hugs her again before she heads back downstairs, and he goes to use the bathroom. On his way back to his room, Tuomi stares at the door of Eduard’s bedroom for a long while. He even puts his hand on the handle, but doesn’t go in.

He falls asleep fast, and doesn’t dream at all.

In the morning when he wakes up, it’s already starting to get light outside, which must mean he slept longer than he has in some time. Maybe, being here is doing him some good after all, Tuomi thinks, peering out across the landing. Downstairs, he can hear Erzsébet cluttering around, unsurprisingly still unable to do anything quietly. It’s almost as if he’s a child again and his mother is making lunch during the winter holidays, when the snow was too heavy for anyone to go to school.

After freshening up, Tuomi joins his sister in the living room, where she’s busily writing something down while she bobs her head to the music on the radio.

“Good morning!” She smiles at him. “Did you sleep well?”

“Surprisingly so, yeah.” He looks around conspicuously. “Just you again?”

“Oh, shush, Tuomas, you’ll get to threaten the poor man soon enough.” She laughs, but her expression sobers quickly. “They didn’t find anything in the woods, but there’s been another incident. Remember Iryna? Apparently, some of her chickens were killed last night. She didn’t notice anything.”

Tuomi nods. “How _is_ Iryna?”

She was close to Eduard, too. They used to be in a choir together, but that is a long time ago and already was six years ago. They remained good friends.

“She’s well. I was planning to go visit her, actually, before I get the groceries. You could come if you want.”

That would be nice, so he agrees to come. Since it’s practically noon by now, they have lunch before bundling up and heading out. It hasn’t snowed any more, but the sky is cloudy and threatening, so it most likely will before tomorrow.

Erzsébet points out some things that have changed in the village, where new people have moved in houses that were still empty six years ago, left abandoned during the war. It’s good to see, if wry. The whole town feels wry to Tuomi, oddly disconnected, but it doesn’t hurt as he feared it would.

Iryna is warm as ever, hugging Tuomi close as soon as he and Erzsébet walk into her little shop full of sewing supplies, which hasn’t changed in the slightest. Iryna herself has cut her pale hair shorter, but her kind smile is the same. A little frazzled, but welcoming.

“So good to see you, Tuomi. Are you staying for a while?”

“Of course,” he replies, and he hears Erzsébet sigh behind him. Coming here, he wasn’t sure whether he could stand to stay, but he knows now that he can, and plans on taking up on his sister’s open invitation. “Maybe I can help out. There are always things to do, especially when the winter’s like this.”

“And then there’s that bear,” Iryna sighs.

“Why do you think it’s a bear?” Erzsébet asks.

“The door of the shed was torn open,” she explains, while they follow her behind the counter and into her actual house. “As far as I know, no wolf or anything else can do that.”

“Wolves _are_ pretty smart.” Erzsébet cocks her head. “But it does seem more likely that a bear woke up too early and is grumpy now.”

“Maybe you can help with taking care of that, Tuomi.”

“I’m not much of a hunter,” he says, accepting the cup of tea Iryna hands him. “Thank you.”

She smiles. “Just as well. Actually, if you don’t mind, you could help me patch up the shed.”

“Sure, of course!” He is always happiest when he can do something useful with his hands, not unlike Erzsébet. Although Eduard was handy as well, he was more of a studious type than either of them. It still stings that the most cautious one of the three of them—the only cautious one, if you’d have asked their mother—should die alone in the woods.

No one knows, really, what happened that night. Tuomi remembers blood like auburn rivers in the snow. Shreds of Eduard’s favorite coat, the green one. Some pale hair, just lying there as if left in the drain, nearly invisible on the frozen ground. No one ever found Eduard’s body. At least, not all of it. Tuomi’s stomach turns every time he thinks of the grave that’s almost empty. They survived the war, all of them, and then…

He puts his cup down on the table and turns to Iryna.

“Where’s this shed? I’ll see what I can do.”

The woman bites her lip, eyebrows drawing together, but, with a glance at Erzsébet, stands and leads him out to her backyard, pointing at the shed.

“I had to put the chickens back in the coop,” she explains, shivering and pulling the sleeves of her cardigan down, “but it’s cold, so I’d like to have them back inside tonight.”

Tuomi surveys the door, putting his hands in the pockets of his coat. It shouldn’t be too hard to fix; the lock has broken off, but it’s still in one piece, just like the hinges. He asks Iryna if she has any tools he can use, and waits while she goes to get them.

“Bears don’t eat chickens, do they?” she asks when she comes back, pensive.

“Bears will eat anything when pressed, honestly.” He takes the tools. “I’ll be done in… Fifteen minutes?”

Iryna smiles and clasps his shoulder on her way back to her house, the snow crunching under her boots. Tuomi sets to work putting the lock back. It has been cleanly broken off the door; there are barely even any splinters. That must have been one delicate bear.

With anyone else, Tuomi would wonder if they didn’t do it themselves, faked an attack to get some attention, but Iryna can’t possibly have changed so much in six years that she would stoop to that.

It doesn’t even take ten minutes before the shed can be locked again. Tuomi tries the door a couple of times, and checks inside that there is no debris. He finds hay, and bloodstains in the dirt, and is thinking about the restraint this supposed bear showed by not just ripping all the chickens to shreds, when he spots something light in the corner of the shed, stuck on the edge of an old table the chickens must use to roost now.

He frowns, reaching for it.

It’s hair. Fur. He rubs the coarse lock of hair between his fingers, still furrowing his brow. Do bears get grey as they age? Maybe they do, he decides, but certainly not this light of a grey. Some of the hairs are practically white.

“Iryna,” he calls, walking back into her house.

“Tuomi! Is it fixed?” She hands him his still warm tea back as soon as he enters the kitchen, where Erzsébet is reading some kind of magazine.

“Yes, no problems. But I don’t think it was a bear.”

“No?”

He opens his free hand to show her the patch of fur, and Iryna cocks her head. Erzsébet stands up to take a look, and sighs.

“Better get another lock, Iryna. Wolves will stop at nothing.”

After saying goodbye to Iryna, Tuomi helps Erzsébet pick up groceries and tells her about the time he almost ended up marrying a woman during his travels, completely on accident.

“How was I supposed to know that man was actually an ordained minister?” he asks, and Erzsébet is laughing too much to attempt an answer, leaning her hands on the kitchen counter, shoulders shaking.

“It sounds like you have enough stories for the next six years,” she says, eventually. Tuomi bites his lip and focuses on the potato he’s peeling.

“I might,” he mumbles.

“Eduard would have loved to hear them.” She slants a soft smile his way.

Tuomi knows. All three of them love a good story. It’s something their parents instilled in them.

“Do you ever visit his grave?” he asks Erzsébet. She leans back against the counter after putting the potatoes on to boil.

“I do, but not…” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I keep it tidy, because you know Ed, that’s what he’d have done, but it’s not… A special place, not in the way Mom and Dad’s graves are, or my father’s.”

Nodding, Tuomi touches the back of her hand, and she smiles gently.

“It _is_ hard sometimes, Tuomi, living here. I understand why you left.”

“I understand why you stayed,” he replies. Tomorrow, he decides, he’ll go to visit his parents’ graves.

For now, they switch to lighter topics, laughing over dinner and finding a photo album to look at during the evening while the radio crackles in the background. When Erzsébet’s husband does eventually come home, he looks so exhausted that Tuomi just greets him and then lets him be on his way, watching him stumble up the stairs. The winter doesn’t tend to be forgiving, and he gets that.

Erzsébet frowns and retires as well, bringing some leftovers with her. Tuomi sits in the living room for a while longer, digging his toes into the carpet and listening to the radio in the light of the frozen moon. He imagines when he turns it off, that he can hear a howl in the wind, but there’s nothing but a rustle in the trees in the garden.

They shovel snow the next day before anyone can even leave the house, Erzsébet’s husband smoking continuously throughout, almost nervously.

“Are you alright?” Tuomi asks him, raising his eyebrows.

“Me?” He leans on his shovel. “Just worried about the wolf.”

Tuomi nods. That’s fair. It must be stressful, having the expectations of the whole town resting on your shoulders. The man is gone quickly afterwards, just a small dark speck in the snowy town. Erzsébet stands in the doorway and looks after him, pulling her shawl around her shoulders and smoking a cigarette as well.

“He’s so wound up about it,” she tells Tuomi. “I hope they find something soon.”

He puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her back into the warm house.

“I’m sure they will. They’re hunters, it’s what they do.”

“Not professionally,” she replies, but drops it. “You wanted to go visit Mom and Dad today, isn’t it? They’d have hated this weather.”

“I really wondered why we always stayed in the north.”

Before they can do that, Erzsébet runs some errands, and Tuomi tries to read a book between wandering restlessly through the house. When they finally go outside and start making their way to the graveyard, he offers his sister his arm. There are children playing out in the streets, enthusiastically lobbing snowballs at each other and trying to grab each other’s sleds. Some of them wave at Erzsébet, who waves back and tells Tuomi she helps out at the local school sometimes, mostly cleaning and looking after the children during lunches.

“I suppose it’s a way of continuing what Eduard started,” she says, waiting while Tuomi pushes the graveyard’s gate open. “You know, teaching people. I’m not as smart as he was, but still…”

“You’re plenty smart.”

“I’m not saying I’m not. I’m just saying Ed was smarter. That’s not a secret.” She closes the gate behind herself and stares out across the silent graveyard next to Tuomi. Like this, covered in snow and illuminated by the setting sun, it’s like they’re watching a miniature landscape. The monuments are tiny hills and the trees watch over everything as if holding the sky up.

As they walk silently to the edge of the graveyard, snow starts falling again, gently fluttering down and sticking in Erzsébet’s dark hair and to Tuomi’s coat. Across the field, where the forest begins, the shadows seem as though they are dotted with stars.

They stop, and Erzsébet reaches over to brush the snow off their parents’ headstone. Her father is buried on a military cemetery elsewhere, but his name is inscribed on their mother’s grave as well. She was widowed twice.

It’s still strange to Tuomi that Erzsébet is all he has now, that his whole family is just her.

Well, he has a brother-in-law, he supposes, and he seems like a nice man.

A dark shape emerges out of the snow, and both of them duck on instinct as a large black bird soars overhead. It lands silently on a headstone just across the path, feet sinking into the snow. The raven blinks at them, tilting its small head while snow slowly falls on black wings.

“That’s…” Erzsébet whispers, taking a step forward. “That’s Eduard’s grave. I think I’ve seen that bird before, around here.”

The raven squawks and spreads its wings to fly off again. It circles over Tuomi’s head before disappearing into the snow and falling darkness.

“I think it lives here,” Erzsébet says. She tugs the brim of her hat over her eyes to shield them. “But it’s nice to think—”

The bird soars back, landing on Eduard’s headstone again.

“That maybe, it’s watching over Ed,” she finishes. “I wonder if it’s hungry.”

But Tuomi isn’t listening to her. He’s watching the raven, whose beady eyes seem fixed on him. Underneath its feet, he can just make out Eduard’s name, the cold dates marking his whole life. He was only 27.

“Tuomi?” Erzsébet whispers.

The raven takes off again. Tuomi runs after it.

“Tuomi!”

He can hear her hurry after him. Ahead, the raven sits on the last headstone at the edge of the graveyard. As soon as Tuomi catches up with it, the bird soars into the shadows of the forest. The moon is barely up, and although it is nearly full, it doesn’t light his way as he hurries into the dark.

“Tuomas Mets!” Erzsébet hisses, even as she continues to follow him. “What are you _doing_?”

He shushes her, squinting into the trees to try and find the raven. It seemed… Important. Tuomi isn’t a man who believes in superstitions, no matter what he saw during the war, on his travels, so it’s not that he thinks this bird… Is watching over Eduard, like Erzsébet said, or anything like that, but it seemed so imploring. Maybe it just needs help. The winter is hard.

A tug on the sleeve of his coat. Tuomi follows Erzsébet’s gaze to where the raven has landed on a snowy log. He takes a step toward the bird.

In the next moment, it takes off again, and a large, light shape hurtles out of the shadows. Erzsébet curses, letting go of Tuomi as she stumbles back.

The _wolf_ growls low in its throat while the raven settles in a tree above it. With slow, measured steps, the wolf crosses the space between the trees, its paws soundless on the ground and its green eyes burning through the darkened night.

Tuomi knows that color.

He would know it anywhere, even after six years. After ten, twenty. It will haunt him for the rest of his life. Slowly, and almost detachedly, he kneels in the snow.

“Tuomi!” Erzsébet hisses. The raven calls.

But the wolf is silent, standing still and looking at Tuomi, who doesn’t dare blink, afraid of losing the moment. For the first time in six years, he can see his brother’s eyes, the peculiar sea green, like part of the northern lights.

“Eduard,” he whispers, reaching out.

The wolf turns, and runs into the darkness. When Tuomi wants to leap up and follow, Erzsébet is there, hauling him back with both of her arms around his waist and her breathing harsh in his ear.

The raven circles over them once before flying into the forest, and Tuomi swears, sagging into his sister.

“Tuomi, are you _insane_?” she hisses. Before he can even think of how to answer that, she’s dragging him back through the graveyard, icily quiet. They don’t stop once before they reach the gate.

“What just _happened_?” Erzsébet then asks, leaning against the snow-covered fence and pushing her gloved hands against her face. Snow glistens in her hair in the light of a street lantern. “You could have been hurt, Tuomi.”

“I’m not sure.” He breathes out heavily, watching a cloud form in front of his face. Did she hear him say Eduard’s name? Did the wolf hear him? He _knew_ those eyes. He knows he did.

“Let’s go home,” she sighs, linking her arm through his. Now, Tuomi is sure he hears a howl in the woods behind them, and a large black bird soars ahead.

Neither of them tells Erzsébet’s husband about the encounter with the wolf.

Tuomi has uneasy dreams, and come morning, he feels a familiar itch, an urge to leave. He can’t. He’s here now, and he’s run away enough.

“Where are you going?” Erzsébet asks, leaning against the doorpost of the living room while he puts his coat on in the hall. She wearing pants today, which he can’t recall having seen her do before, although she might have during the war. He wasn’t here, then.

“I don’t know. I might see how Iryna’s doing.” He smiles slightly, trying to look reassuring, and Erzsébet nods with a sigh.

“Well, be careful.”

“Of course not,” he jokes. She raises her eyebrows, and he bites his lip. “Of course I will, Erzsi.”

Tuomi walks through the sunny, snow-covered village, stopping to talk to some locals when they recognize him and pushing an excitable little boy down a slope on his homemade sled. Really, it’s good to see that the town is doing well again. It lifts his spirits.

At the town hall, or what passes for it, he spots a poster warning people to be careful after dark, and definitely not let their children out unsupervised. There’s a little map of the area, with Iryna’s house and several other locations across town marked as where there have been attacks the past few weeks.

It must be a very smart wolf, because the sites move from one end to the village from one attack to the next, effectively leading the hunters on a wild goose chase.

Eduard was smart, Tuomi catches himself thinking. He always thought ahead.

He _knew_ those eyes.

Behind him, his name is called.

“Hey, Tuomi,” Erzsébet’s husband says, walking over to him with his hat pulled low over his eyes against reflecting sunlight, his green coat flying out behind him. “Erzsébet says you forgot your scarf.”

He laughs, and takes the scarf when the man gives it to him.

“Are you two very sure you don’t want children?” he asks, and gets a dry laugh in response.

“Believe me, not exactly father material.” He waves, and starts in the direction of the forest. Tuomi unfurls the scarf, and is surprised when something flutters out of it, landing gently in the snow.

A single black father rests by his feet. Slowly, he picks it up. Turns it over between his fingers. When he looks over his shoulder, his brother-in-law is long gone from view.

“Great,” he whispers.

Without really deciding to do so, Tuomi goes back to the graveyard. The church bells ring noon when he reaches his brother’s grave and pushes the snow off to lay the feather down on top of the cold headstone.

_Eduard Mets, 1920-1948_

It doesn’t _mean_ anything, not really, but his knees give out all of a sudden, so he kneels on the stone edge of the grave, the sun warming his face and trying to pierce through his closed eyelids. He doesn’t feel the cold snow seeping through his pants or crawling into his gloves to chill his fingertips. Not for the first time, he wonders what the hell he’s supposed to do in a place without Eduard. What he’s _been_ doing, these past six years. Drifting, he thinks. Helplessly drifting.

A gentle hand lands on his shoulder, and doesn’t have to open his eyes to know it’s Erzsébet.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

“Don’t.” With a rush of cold air, she crouches next to him, and now, Tuomi glances her way. “I just want to make sure you don’t catch your death.”

“Your husband brought me my scarf.” He looks at the single feather sitting on top of the headstone.

“Good. I’ve lost enough people.”

“We all have,” Tuomi says quietly. “But I think I was right to come back, Erzsi. You’re not losing me.”

She smiles at him, familiar green eyes crinkling ever more at the corners, then straightens.

“I’m going back home. Are you coming?”

With a last look at the cold, unyielding stone of Eduard’s grave, Tuomi nods. His chilled joints protest as he stands, and he grimaces at his sister.

“You’re not the one who’s almost forty, little brother,” she chides him, and he can’t help but grin, even as he realizes that Eduard would have been 34 in just a few days. Maybe, they should do something for his birthday. He’ll have to ask Erzsébet.

As they approach their childhood home, Tuomi’s gaze catches on an upstairs window, where a blue curtain flutters in the still air.

“Hey, Erzsébet?”

“Hm?” She pulls at the cord hanging out of the mail slot to open the front door.

“What have you done with Eduard’s room?”

“Nothing much.” She follows his gaze upwards. Frowns. “I definitely didn’t open the window.”

Inside, Tuomi rattles up the stairs, and is already pushing the door handle of Eduard’s bedroom down when he hesitates. He turns to Erzsébet as she climbs the stairs behind him.

Without being asked, she says, “I clean it a few times a year, and we’ve got some of his old books stored, but we don’t… We don’t really go in there.”

With a deep breath, Tuomi pushes the handle down again, and slowly opens the door.

It’s cold in the room, and silent. Eduard’s bed stands, bare but largely covered in books, underneath the open window. He liked to watch the stars, the northern lights when they appeared. He’d always been a dreamer, in his rare free time. No one ever expected that of him, but the only thing greater about Eduard than his intelligence was his imagination.

Erzsébet is walking over and shutting the window, a frown on her face. The latch seems very secure.

“I don’t know how—” She cuts herself off. Tuomi watches with his heart jumping into his throat as she lifts a glossy black feather from the windowsill, holding it between her thumb and index finger. They’re both silent. Of course, this doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.

And still, after yesterday…

“You’ve brough something very odd back to town, Tuomi,” Erzsébet says.

“Maybe it was waiting for me.”

Closing her eyes, she puts the feather back down and presses her hands over her angular face.

“Yesterday, in the woods… What did you see?”

Tuomi’s gaze drifts over to a picture on Eduard’s desk. All three of them, posing in summer clothes with their mother. He remembers the day it was taken. The second summer after the war, everyone just happy to bask in the sunshine.

“I saw his eyes, Erzsébet.”

“He’s dead,” she whispers, then swallows hard. Clenches her fingers around the black feather, crushing it out of shape. “And even if he isn’t, he can’t be… That’s old folk tales. It’s the twentieth century.”

Tuomi would agree with her, but he _knew_ those eyes. She doesn’t know the things he saw during the war, during the past six years. There are remnants of times long gone everywhere, old beliefs still lingering between radios and televisions.

Or maybe he just wants to believe that he can see Eduard again, and it was a mistake to come back home.

“What now?” Erzsébet asks. “Whatever this is, we must be able to figure it out. We owe that to Ed.”

“You’re right. He would have.” Of course, Eduard was the planner, but they’re both smart. Tuomi is certain that, if there is something to find, they will find it. For better or for worse.

After dinner, he has his coat on before Erzsébet is done putting the dishes away, and she grumbles, good-naturedly if a little forced, while he waits for her to bundle up as well. The evening is clear, and the moon is already up, nearly full and lighting their way to the south side of the village, the opposite side of where they were yesterday.

“Haven’t the hunters noticed the pattern?” Tuomi wonders, waving his clouding breath away so he can see the path in front of him. The snow is largely undisturbed here. The air sparkles above it.

“Haven’t heard about it.” Through her shawl, Erzsébet sounds muffled. “It’s unlikely, so they wouldn’t look.”

Again, Tuomi thinks, Eduard was always the planner.

Over the crunch of their shoes in the snow, he hears a hoarse call, the familiar caw of a raven.

“We must be going in the right direction,” he whispers. They’re on the edge of the forest, the evergreen of trees a looming black mass in the darkened evening. Even with the moonlight, the forest floor is dark. Erzsébet just hums. She tucks her hand into the crook of Tuomi’s elbow. In her dark coat and with her pale face mostly covered by her shawl and hat, she’ll be nearly invisible.

After standing still for a moment longer, she starts walking again decisively, leaving Tuomi no choice but to go into the woods as well.

Both silent again, they peer searchingly into the darkness as the trees close around them.

Once more, he hears the raven call, and he squints uselessly up in an effort to spot it. Erzsébet yanks at his arm when he nearly trips.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, sheepishly.

“Try to be careful.” She stops, and Tuomi glances at her, watching her dark eyebrows furrow. He follows her gaze into the shadows, preparing to ask a question, but falls silent.

In the snow, one shadow seems larger than the others.

No, it’s not a shadow. Tuomi shudders and pulls his sister closer to him. He remembers this. The blood-soaked snow of six winters ago still burns in his memory.

“It was here,” Erzsébet whispers. “The wolf.”

And then, it is there again. Piercing eyes burn through the shadows like a white-hot knife and Tuomi can’t move—refuses to move, even when Erzsébet jumps back, pulling on his arm. Ahead of them, the wolf growls low in its throat, baring teeth that glint in the moonlight. With shaking hands, Tuomi lets go of his sister to take a step forward. She doesn’t say anything, and the wolf doesn’t move, sea green eyes unblinking on Tuomi.

“Please,” he whispers, taking another step, “don’t run this time. We’re here.”

The wolf’s muzzle twitches, a small growl escaping, but it doesn’t move.

“I left, but I’m back,” Tuomi continues. Like before, he kneels, slowly, deliberately. He is the only thing moving in the small clearing. Even the trees seem silent.

“I’m not leaving again.”

With a snarl, the wolf leaps. Strong paws knock the breath out of Tuomi as he sprawls back in the snow, the wolf looming over him. Its breath is heavy and warm, and it presses Tuomi down, growling through its teeth.

“Tuomi!” Erzsébet gasps. He can’t look at her, can’t look away from the ever-familiar sea green piercing into him, but he hears her continue in something that’s barely a whisper, “He’s… Eduard, if—if you can hear me, if you understand me… We’re here, we’re both here, so please. Give us a chance.”

The wolf makes an almost plaintive noise, like a kicked dog, and scrambles away, off Tuomi, who grabs Erzsébet’s hand to help himself up, then immediately leaps after the wolf, into the shadows. Swearing, Erzsébet follows him.

Tuomi tries desperately not to lose sight of the flash of grey fur ahead of him, skidding through the snow. Branches slap into his face, showering him with powdery snow, but he doesn’t allow himself to notice. His lungs are burning by the time he bursts into another clearing. The wolf is already on the other side.

“Eduard!” Tuomi calls, and just as the wolf stops, he trips. With nothing to stop him, he falls face-first into the snow, hitting his forehead on a rock hidden underneath. Stars dance in his vision, the shock of cold and pain overwhelming him for a long moment.

It's too much, all of a sudden. He wants nothing more than to stay there until things go back to the way they were before. The way they were six years ago.

“Get _up_ , you—” Erzsébet swears again, and then she hauling Tuomi out of the snow by his armpits, her strength somehow still managing to surprise him after all this time.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed, Tuomas?”

Tuomi looks up at her, startled by the edge of desperation in her voice.

“The wolf—” he starts, and his sister shakes him.

“It’s not the wolf I’m worried about” In the moonlight, her green eyes shimmer with tears. “I thought I was the reckless one, but you’re… Tuomi, what the hell have you done to yourself these past six years?”

“Erzsi,” he whispers, barely able to part his freezing lips. “Eduard is…”

“I know, Tuomi. I saw it.” Her fingers dig into his shoulders. “But he wouldn’t want you to be so… Goddamn reckless. You’re not worth more than he is. And, I think… If I lose you, if _we_ lose you, then there’s no hope for him. Do you understand?”

Teeth clattering, he nods. With a sigh, Erzsébet unfurls her shawl and drapes it around his neck.

“Nothing makes sense here, but I know we’re in it together, if I know anything.” At the call of a raven, she looks up, squinting into the darkness. “There’s something there.”

Tugging her shawl tighter around himself, Tuomi turns to follow her gaze. Between the trees on the other side of the clearing, he can make out a large, dark shape. A building?

“What…” he breathes. Erzsébet squeezes his shoulder, and he looks back at her. “Should we…”

“You need to get out of the cold before your nose freezes off, so yes.”

Before he can reply, she has started marching across the clearing and towards the darkened, run-down cabin, so he follows quickly.

The door isn’t locked, and Erzsébet ushers him in before closing it behind him.

It _is_ marginally warmer inside. Tuomi squints into the darkness and finds the smoldering embers of a dying fire glowing in the corner of the room. He listens, shushing Erzsébet when she starts to speak, but the cabin is silent.

Still, “Someone was here recently.”

“Is that someone still here?” Erzsébet, ever the pragmatist, asks.

“I don’t think so.” As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he makes out the shape of an old oil lamp on a table by the window. Watching his footing, he makes his way over and lights it easily, casting a soft glow over the room. Erzsébet blinks in the light, then looks around.

“What is this place?” she breathes. Tuomi has to agree with her.

The cabin is sparsely furnished, with a bed, table and chair, and a single cabinet next to the door. It is obviously lived in, but feels, more than anything else, like a place to hide.

When Tuomi takes a step forward, he notices that his oil lamp casts odd shadows on the floor, and he shifts the light to get a better look.

There are gouges in the wood, splinters sticking up every which way. The door isn’t much better, and he is reminded of Iryna’s shed. The patterns are the same.

“Tuomi?” Erzsébet says, holding the door of the cabinet open with trembling fingers. “I think…”

He walks over to her, and feels his blood run cold.

“I always wondered where that photograph went,” she whispers, reaching into the cabinet to pick up the shattered frame sitting at the back of one of the shelves. She runs her fingertips across the familiar shape of their mother’s face, faded with age. In this shot, Erzsébet herself has her arms firmly crossed, and Tuomi is looking away from the camera. He remembers seeing something unusual out of the corner of his eye, and so quickly after the war, everything unexpected startled him.

Eduard looks amused, towering over all of them as he always did. His tall form catches all the sun. At the place where his shoulder meets Tuomi’s, there is a tear in the photograph, as if that part was ripped off but eventually put back.

“What does this mean?” Erzsébet asks, putting the picture back down. There is some food in the cabinet, mostly cans, and a meager stack of clothes. Green, and blue. Eduard’s favorite colors.

“I think it means…” He can’t say it, steps back, head pounding.

“We have to do something,” Erzsébet says softly. “There must be a way.”

Tuomi takes another step back.

“It’s been six years—”

“It’s been six years, and you’re back home.”

That’s exactly what he was afraid of. Putting the lamp down, Tuomi runs back into the night.

“Tuomi!” Erzsébet calls, her footsteps thundering after him, but he doesn’t stop, not until he reaches the edge of the forest and he almost trips into the road, caught at the last moment by familiar gloved hands.

For a second, the green coat makes his breath catch, and he can barely look up. It’s just his brother-in-law, smelling like cigarette smoke.

“Tuomi, look out,” he starts, but Tuomi wrenches himself away, tripping back again—only to find that Erzsébet has caught up to him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouts. “We have to do something!”

“Erzsébet, not—” He turns around, but her husband is gone. Tuomi blinks. He _was_ there, wasn’t he?

“Not what? You’re here now, and we have to—”

“That’s just it!” he bursts out. “I’m here _now_! I wasn’t here for the past six years, because I ran away, like a coward! I abandoned Eduard! I abandoned everything.”

“No one blames you—”

“I do, Erzsébet,” he says, hoarsely. “I always have, but now…”

“How do you think I feel?” she asks, grasping his shoulders with that firm grip of hers. “I was here all along, and I never once helped him. I mourned him, and, _god_ , have I been angry at him, at _you_ , but I wish I could have helped.”

“You couldn’t have known,” he tells her, knowing as he says it what she will reply.

“Nor could you, Tuomi.”

He closes his eyes, hanging his head, and Erzsébet rests her forehead against his.

“We’re going to help him.” She clenches his shoulders. “I promise.”

A tear rolls hotly down his freezing cheek, but Tuomi ignores it to pull back and look at his sister.

“I promise,” she repeats. “Let’s go home.”

They go home, and Tuomi tries to sleep for hours, tossing and turning and staring into the shadows of his now-unfamiliar childhood bedroom, the moonlight catching on the edges of furniture that wasn’t there before like an alien landscape.

He thinks about the cabin in the forest, the grooves like claw marks in the wood. About living in fear of yourself for six years. He wishes it could have been him. Anyone but Eduard.

Eventually, he must fall asleep, but wakes when the night is just fading to dawn. He thinks he might have heard a noise, and when he looks out of his window, there is an unfamiliar shadow in the snowy garden. It is gone in the blink of an eye.

Tuomi knows he won’t be able to sleep again, so he gets dressed quietly and walks to the landing, avoiding the floorboards that are creaky on muscle memory alone. Eduard was always a light sleeper. _Is_ a light sleeper? Tuomi sighs and puts his hand against his brother’s bedroom door.

“Sorry, Eduard,” he mumbles, and then there’s that noise again, just behind the door. Like… A shuffle. A breath. Tuomi’s heart skips a beat.

“Erzsébet?” he whispers, but he can hear her snoring lightly down the hall, so it can’t be.

The noise again.

“Eduard?”

Nothing. With trembling hands, he pushes the door open.

The blue curtain flutters in a soft, cold breeze, swinging into the empty room.

“God— _fuck_!” Tuomi clenches his jaw. Of course. What was he thinking? He slams the window shut, leaning on the sill heavily for a moment, trying to catch his breath with his eyes closed.

“Tuomi?” His sister’s voice is soft behind him.

“Sorry, Erzsi,” he grits out. Taking a deep breath of the frigid air, he forces himself to relax when she puts a warm hand between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t be.”

In the reflection in the window, Tuomi meets her tired eyes.

“You didn’t sleep well either?”

“Of course not.” She smiles tightly when he turns to her. “I keep thinking about Ed. It’s like when he just…” Her words trail off, and she evidently doesn’t know what to say.

“Yes.” Tuomi glances at the desk, the photograph, and his breath hitches all over again. “Erzsébet.”

She turns.

“No…”

There is a knife, on the desk, its handle tilted to the left as if the person who put it there was left-handed. Like Eduard. The metal is unblemished, shining like moonlight, and the edges sharp.

“How… Who…” Erzsébet wraps her arms around her herself, but Tuomi reaches for the knife, slowly. It’s cold in his hand.

“Silver,” he says.

There is no indication where the knife might have come from, no note or engraving or even a fingerprint. Tuomi turns to the window and looks at the retreating moon.

“No, Eduard,” he says. “You underestimate us.”

“What do we do?” Erzsébet is asking. “He won’t be at the cabin, he’s smarter than that.”

“Then we look.” Like they did six years ago, when he went missing.

Tuomi puts the knife back down, and turns to the wardrobe. There is one coat inside still, Eduard’s nice coat, the one he wore to their mother’s funeral, the one they would have buried him in if there had been enough of him to bury. It was already terrifying to think of what happened to him, that day in the forest, but now, knowing he survived, it’s somehow more harrowing to think about. How did he recover? Was the wolf his salvation, or was that what tore him apart in the first place?

“He must know,” he says, “that we’d never stop looking.”

“We’ll remind him, Tuomi.”

“Not to interrupt—”

Erzsébet nearly whacks her husband in the face with how fast she whips around at the sound of his voice. He jumps back, unlit cigarette falling from between his lips.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and he takes a step into the room, his eyes widening at the sight of the knife on the desk.

“We were… It’s almost Eduard’s birthday,” Erzsébet stammers. “It’s… On our minds.”

“Of course.” He takes a step back this time. “I have to go.”

“Hey…” Erzsébet reaches for him, and he takes her hand. “Be careful, please. The wolf is out there.”

“Of course.” He meets Tuomi’s eyes for a charged second. “Don’t worry.”

He kisses her once, picks up his cigarette, and is gone again.

“He’s strange, isn’t he?” Tuomi asks, and Erzsébet laughs, surprised.

“I’ve always had a type.”

Feeling a little lighter despite himself, Tuomi follows her downstairs, taking Eduard’s coat with him. It smells musty, but is still somehow comforting, so he tugs it on after breakfast, when they go out without a clear destination in mind. He wouldn’t have fit it six years ago, but he has lost all the weight he put on after the war since then, and although the sleeves are long, it feels nice.

“You look more like him than when you two were younger,” Erzsébet says thoughtfully, and he smiles, offering her his arm.

They walk over to Iryna’s first, where Iryna compliments Tuomi’s coat and tells them she hasn’t heard of any new incidents in town.

“Maybe it did move on,” she muses. Tuomi and Erzsébet share a look. That is an option, he thinks, but then shakes his head. If Eduard stayed around here all these years, he surely wouldn’t leave now.

Then again, sometimes all it takes to make a difference is one experience, one person.

They have to find him.

“We’ll see you again soon, Iryna,” he says, pulling Erzsébet along while she waves at Iryna.

They spend most of the morning wandering around the edge of town, and then Tuomi spots the local library-cum-bookstore and has to go and look at the books on myths and legends while Erzsébet goes to get something to eat at home. She brings him back some bread while he reads about wolfmen and werewolves, and she waves at the bookstore owner too. He always liked Tuomi.

Well, he liked Eduard, and Tuomi was inevitable, at that point.

The books are… Inconclusive. He doesn’t know what he expected. Of course there is no consensus on something that isn’t supposed to exist.

“Now, you really look like him,” Erzsébet says, looking over his shoulder.

“Eduard would have fifty more books and you know it.” He closes the one in front of him. “It’s no use. We have to find him.”

There is no sign of Eduard anywhere, and they don’t see the ubiquitous raven either, not even at the graveyard. By the time evening is falling, Tuomi wonders if they should have gone to the cabin after all, but he’s also very hungry and very cold, and it’s starting to snow again, so they go back home to eat dinner.

Erzsébet’s husband, looking bedraggled and somehow sorry, wanders in halfway through and barely eats anything before announcing he’s going to sleep. Erzsébet stares after him, forehead creased.

“Stranger than usual?” Tuomi asks.

“Yes. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

She bites her lip. “He’s a grown man. Eduard is more important now.”

Tuomi touches her shoulder, but doesn’t say anything else.

Despite the snow, gently falling, they go out again, Tuomi still wearing his brother’s coat. The moon is full tonight. Some of the stories he read claimed the phases of the moon affect the wolf. He hopes that isn’t true. Eduard has seen a thousand moons or more, the past six years, but something of him is left. A fire deep inside. Tuomi means to wake it, because if anyone can, it’s him and Erzsébet.

It feels like the how is still miles away when they hear it, but it pulls on Tuomi, cuts through the snowy night.

“Let’s go,” Erzsébet says, and they hurry to the forest. Still, the raven is nowhere to be seen. Maybe, its work is done.

The forest is silent, pine trees like looming giants protecting their secrets. Neither Tuomi nor Erzsébet speaks. They listen. Their own footsteps crunch gently, but there is a woolly silence all around them. Sometimes, Tuomi spots something grey out of the corner of his vision, but it’s always snow.

Until it isn’t.

The wolf, the _same wolf_ , leaps out, teeth bared in a snarl, shaking its head as if preparing to pounce.

Tuomi slows his pace but doesn’t stop walking. Erzsébet does. The wolf growls as he nears, snapping its jaw at him. Its light fur is stained with something, the color unclear in the darkness. Erzsébet takes a few steps forward.

Reaching his hand out, Tuomi gets his gloved fingers close enough that the wolf could bite them, if it wanted. It doesn’t. It stands there, frozen, and Tuomi can’t take the look in those familiar eyes. He kneels again.

“I’m back,” he says softly. He can’t bring himself to say his brother’s name, this time, afraid the wolf might run. “I’ll come back as often as it takes. I promise.”

The wolf shakes its head again, flinging snow off the fur.

“Me as well,” Erzsébet says, resting her fingertips on Tuomi’s shoulder. “And you know us. We’re stubborn as anything. Got that from Mom.”

“Please,” Tuomi says, reaching further forward. The wolf cautiously watches them both, those sea green eyes so unmistakably intelligent. He takes his hand back to remove his glove, then offers his fingers again, swallowing nervously. Erzsébet’s hand clenches on his shoulder, through the coat.

When the wolf nudges its cold nose against his fingertips, Tuomi makes an involuntary sound in his throat that has the animal looking up, lips already curling back for a growl, so he speaks quickly.

“You’re cold,” he says. “You never liked the cold, just like Mom and Dad. I had to bring so much firewood in to keep you warm.”

The wolf if still. Tuomi takes his coat—Eduard’s coat—off with measured movements. Erzsébet takes a breath.

“I still can’t smell the wood stove burning without thinking of you.” She huffs a nervous little laugh. “Even Mom thought it was too hot at a certain point, and that was rare.”

Tuomi has managed to get out of the coat, and he holds his fingers out again.

“It will be alright,” he whispers. “I promise, Eduard.”

Before the wolf can do anything, he drapes the coat around its haunches. For a moment, it stares up at him in confusion, green eyes wide, and Tuomi is convinced this was all for nothing, that his brother is gone forever, but then, the wolf curls in on itself with an ear-piercing howl of pain, and he has to hold Erzsébet back from lunging for it while it disappears almost completely beneath the coat’s blue fabric.

In the stillness of the forest, the sound is agonizing. The howl only barely manages to be louder than an awful popping, like bones snapping, like something tearing itself apart right before their eyes. Erzsébet hauls Tuomi up and clenches his cold hand painfully, breathing hard.

It stops, suddenly, and the silence is deafening.

Tuomi takes a step forward.

There is a flash of movement, but it isn’t in his direction. It’s away from him.

And for the first time in six years, he sees his brother’s face, those green eyes and his pale skin, fair hair matted as he scrambles away.

“Eduard,” Tuomi says, and Erzsébet is the only thing holding him up when his knees threaten to give out under the relief and sadness and anger all welling up inside him.

Eduard’s eyes, those _eyes_ , are wide and terrified, and he falls into the snow when he tries to get up, pulling his coat tight around his skinny form. Although he is wearing tattered denim jeans, his feet are bare.

“What’s happening?” he stutters, his voice hoarse and panicked. “How is this—”

When he finally meets Tuomi’s eye, Tuomi manages to take a step in his direction, and Eduard just _looks_ , terrified.

“ _Eduard_.”

“No, no. Get away!” He curls in on himself, violent shivers coursing through his body. “This can’t be real. Leave me alone!”

“It’s us, Eduard,” Erzsébet says, her voice thick with emotion.

He tries to get up but falls again, and this time, both Tuomi and Erzsébet rush forward to catch him. He jerks in their grip, his skin ice cold. His face is gaunt and haunted, and his breathing fast.

“You don’t understand,” he whispers, shaking. Erzsébet begins unwinding her scarf. “I’m… I can’t.”

His fingers dig into Tuomi’s arm through his sweater.

“I understand you’re scared.” Tuomi watches his brother flinch when Erzsébet gently puts her scarf around his shoulders.

“No, you don’t.” Eduard tries to wrench himself free, but he just falls again, and scrambles back through the snow on his hands and feet. “I’m protecting you. I’m— I’ve done so many things. So many terrible—”

“I fought in the war, Eduard,” Tuomi says, and Eduard flinches again, so different from the unflappable man Tuomi used to know.

“ _Please_ , leave me.” Eduard chokes back a sob. “I don’t deserve—”

“You don’t get to decide that,” Erzsébet says, and Tuomi can see tears streaking down her face in the moonglow. “You have the freedom to choose the things you feel, but you don’t get to decide whether you _deserve_ our help, Ed.”

He bends his head, his skinny shoulders shaking with tears.

“You can’t help. I can’t…” He speaks to the ground. “The wolf is… It gets what it wants. I just live in the shade, and I don’t…”

He meets Tuomi’s eye again.

“I don’t think I deserve to even be called alive anymore, sometimes.”

This time, he doesn’t flinch away when Tuomi gets closer to him, watching him kneel in the snow. Gently, Tuomi reaches out, brushes snowflakes off his shoulders. His hair is long and tangled, but his eyes are ever so bright.

“I recognized your eyes, Ed,” he whispers. “No one has eyes like that except you. No wolf I’ve ever seen has eyes like that.”

Eduard closes them.

“I was never going to let you go. I never will. If I have to do this every night for the rest of my life, I will.”

“We will,” Erzsébet adds. Eduard opens his eyes, a wild, unfamiliar edge to his expression. Like a wolf looking for prey.

“Don’t say things like that.” His voice is a rasp, barely more than a breath. He doesn’t blink.

“You’re not the wolf, Eduard. I know that.” Tuomi takes a deep breath, cold air burning in his lungs. “I _love_ _you_ , alright? I never stopped, and I never will. I could never wish you dead.”

The wolf in Eduard’s eyes blinks first, and disappears.

“Tuomi,” he says.

“I _promise_.” He grasps Eduard’s face, and Erzsébet kneels at the man’s side, taking one of his bony hands.

“Erzsébet, I…”

“Listen to your brother, Mets.” She clenches her jaw, reaches into a pocket of her coat, and pulls out the silver blade. “This was never going to be the answer, not with us.”

“If you cannot save me, I need you—”

“No.” She holds his gaze, and then throws the knife into the shadows with all her strength. It glints harshly in the moonlight, just once, before disappearing. “We both love you, and it’s time to go _home_.”

From one of the trees, a raven calls, and Eduard looks up as it flies back in the direction of the village.

“Alright,” he breathes, and lets both of them help him to his feet, his bare feet in the snow. Tuomi swallows, but holds him up as he knows he always will.

“Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Who is Hun's husband? Is the raven also a human? Are these questions related? No one knows!
> 
> (I know.)


End file.
